Join
us on July 21st at 5pm for an evening of poetry readings by the
children of Elm Tree Poetry.

About
the Program:

Elm
Tree Poetry is a place-based poetry program for children in and
around Prospect Park. We aim to foster a positive relationship with
poetry during early childhood, and to ignite an interest in the
literary arts. On July 21, Unnameable Books will be hosting Elm
Tree’s first poetry reading, featuring the works of our students,
on subjects ranging from the personal to the political.

Founders
and Teaching Artists:

Romy
Feder: Romy is a co-founder of Elm Tree Poetry. She
grew up on the Upper West Side of New York City. She earned her
bachelor’s degree at Pitzer College, Claremont, CA. in Media
Studies and Creative Writing. In 2011, she received a Fulbright
English Teaching Fellowship and taught at the University of Costa
Rica, San Jose. She led poetry workshops for students and faculty and
gave lectures on North American history and culture. She is a 2013
recipient of the Truman Capote Foundation Scholarship and a Graduate
Council Fellowship to study at the University of Alabama MFA in
poetry. She is currently attending Hunter College for her Master's in
Early Childhood Education. This upcoming school year, she will be a
full-time assistant teacher at the Williamsburg Neighborhood Nursery
School.

Rod
Bastanmehr: Rod grew up in Marin County, California.
He earned his bachelor’s degree in Film Theory and Cultural
Criticism from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and has been
writing professionally ever since. After graduating in 2011, he
worked as an Assistant Editor for a Bay Area metro newspaper before
moving to New York the following year. Since arriving, he has served
as a Copy Editor, a Managing Editor, and political blogger for a
number of publications. He currently writes about film and media for
VICE, and has contributed to The Atlantic, Salon, Slate, Los Angeles
Review Of Books and more. He has been nannying in and around Park
Slope for over two years, caring for children as young as six-months
and as old as twelve. He’s excited for the chance to gallivant
around the park with precocious kids.

Sally
Rodgers: Sally is a co-founder of Elm Tree Poetry. She
lives in Tucson, Arizona. For the past two years, she has taught at
the elementary and middle school levels with the IDEA School in
Tucson, Arizona. In the fall, she will begin a new position as the
Executive Director at a literary arts nonprofit called Casa Libre.
After earning her bachelor’s degree from Portland State University,
she worked for two years as a preschool teacher at Tucson’s Second
Street Children’s School. Her tenure at Second Street ended with a
move to Alabama where she received her MFA in poetry. She founded the
University of Alabama Writers in the Schools Program with her friend
Kenny Kruse. In this program, she acted as both Associate Director
and Director of Curriculum.

ANNA DREZEN
is a comedian and writer for Saturday Night Live. She's the
editor-at-large of Reductress and coauthor of the books How May We Hate
You? and How To Win At Feminism. She performs regularly at the Upright
Citizens Brigade Theater, The PIT, and Union Hall. www.annadrezen.com

SALLY WEN MAO
is a poet and educator, the author of Mad Honey Symposium (Alice James
Books, 2014) and the forthcoming Oculus (Graywolf Press, 2019). Her
poetry has appeared in The Pushcart Prize anthology, The Best American
Poetry 2013, Poetry, Harvard Review Online, and A Public Space.
Currently she is a fellow at the New York Public Library Cullman Center
for Scholars and Writers.

NICOLE R. FLEETWOOD is Associate
Professor in the Department of American Studies at Rutgers University,
New Brunswick. She is the author of Troubling Vision: Performance,
Visuality, and Blackness (University of Chicago Press 2011) and On
Racial Icons: Blackness and the Public Imagination (Rutgers University
Press, 2015). Her research has been supported by the Whiting
Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, National
Endowment for the Humanities, Schomburg Center for Black Culture/ NYPL,
and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She is the recipient of the 2012
Lora Romero First Book Publication Prize of the American Studies
Association. Currently, she is in residence at the NYPL Cullman Center
for Scholars and Writers, completing a book manuscript on art and visual
culture in the era of mass incarceration.

SHELTER is a speaker series bringing different ideas together under one roof.

Join us at the store on May 16th at 7pm for the book launch of Emma Smith-Stevens' The Australian.

About the Book:

In her humorous and emotionally resonant debut, Emma Smith-Stevens
follows the exploits and evolution of a young man—known only as the
Australian—over the course of a dozen years, from his time in Melbourne,
posing as Superman for tourist photos, to his life in New York, where
he spends years unemployed before stumbling into fame and fortune.

TRES FREEBORN is a songwriter, composer and conceptual artist. Gathering influence from conversations with future and past, Freeborn’s raw and passionate style of afro-future-grunge focuses on collective and relational liberation. Freeborn’s debut album, The Martyr Suite, will be released in Summer 2017.

REXYLAFEMME (rex renee leonowitch) is a trans/queer/non-binary femme artist/performer/poet from queens, nyc. their art and performance work is grounded in a politics of radical resistance, healing, and witness. rex's book of poems/illustrations, when there is no one & there is everyone, is forthcoming from magic helicopter press this summer. http://rexylafemme.tumblr.com/

Join us on Friday, April 28th at 7pm for the release party of Ben Gantcher's new book of poetry, Snow Catcher.

About the Author:

Ben Gantcher’s
recently completed collection of poems, “Snow Farmer,” was a finalist
in the 2014 Omnidawn Open book contest. His first chapbook, “Strings of
Math and Custom,” was published in 2013 by Beard of Bees Press and is
available online as a free PDF. “If a Lettuce,” his first manuscript of
poems, was a finalist in the National Poetry Series and Bright Hill
Press contests. His poems have appeared in many journals, including Tin
House, Slate, Guernica, and The Brooklyn Rail. He was nominated for a
Pushcart Prize, a resident at Ucross and Omi, a correspondent with the
Hyde Park Review of Books and a poetry editor of the journal
“failbetter.” He teaches math, Language Structures and an
interdisciplinary writing and visual art course at Saint Ann’s School in
Brooklyn, NY, where he lives with his wife and three children.